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School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

nytimes.com

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Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#351

Post by whiterknight »

Aachen wrote: post #330
whiterknight wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should read a site tailored to your local interests instead of one focused on Silicon Valley and adjacent cities.

Local interests? HN is a local interests site? That's an interesting take if you look at the stories being submitted, those making it to the homepage, or the diversity of commenters Anyway even if you're from the USA, "everywhere" is still not a useful title: for all anyone knows, it means countries around the world. I'd equally expect our local news to specify "in Nederland" if that's what they mean. Opening such a…

All are welcome. It’s just weird to get upset that it’s US focused.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#352

Post by willcipriano »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #343
willcipriano wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort the classes by learning speed, the faster kids aren't expected to do more or harder class work like today instead they get longer lunches, free periods, more recess and early dismissal. Only slow kids need homework, the fast kids get it done as part of class and peer grade themselves. Frees up teaching resources for the slower kids and respects everyone's time. Puts the incentives in the right places, rewarding…

Are you rewarding diligent students or successful students? It usually ends up being the latter and the slower but diligent ones end up discouraged.

A diligent student with a learning disability or at the far edge of bell curve is in a sense "punished" I suppose, but they are punished with more instruction.

Like in life if they can find a way to work faster they can have more time for other things.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#353

Post by darby_eight »

UncleEntity wrote: post #317
darby_eight wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot more kids mocking AI on TikTok than fearing it, but I might be looking in the wrong place.

“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.” ― Nicholas Klein

Somehow I don't think he was referring to corporate chatbots.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#354

Post by 7thaccount »

whiterknight wrote: post #350
bombcar wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or another way to put it, if 50% of everything is bullshit, you can cut out quite a bit and still not really effect anything. The number of TPS reports filed is not the actual value to the economy, but it gets counted in the GDP.

So the comment above admits that people are taking more time off and working less. So is your argument that the majority of work that we lost didn’t matter anyway?

Basically yes. There's a lot of useless beauracracy at pretty much all companies and the 40 hours took that into account. It seems like with remote work that some folks just started working like 35 hours and focused on the priority items which still got done. The mostly just skipped the useless meetings that were only there for the beauracracy. So the net effect hugely helped the individual, while having minimal impact on actual goals being achieved.

The biggest negative from WFH was it being more challenging to onboard new folks (a legitimate concern). It's less easy for someone new to pop into your cube, ask a question, and then get back to it. Now they have to do it through IM, or schedule a virtual conference. It's not all that much harder...just a bit of additional friction since things are more asynchronous. Maybe the senior engineer you need to talk to is sleeping in late and then working late and you're doing the opposite.

I'll add one additional negative is that WFH may interfere with our natural need to be social. This is extra hard on extroverts, but I think even introverts are impacted. They may be quiet, but I've talked to many that don't miss the disruptions or commute, but do miss just being around other adults to a degree. Some introverts struggle to find social outlets outside of work (especially outside large cities), so they spend a lot of time alone and naturally get lonely and this impacts their mental health. Everyone is different though and none of this is significant enough to force a return to office.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#355

Post by hananova »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #164
williamcotton wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you take your kids on a vacation during school? There are plenty of breaks during the year including all of summer.

Because those breaks don't line up with things like the solar eclipse. Because those breaks don't line up with other cousins' breaks. Because those breaks don't line up with great-grandma's 95th birthday, and she lives a full day's journey away. Because those breaks don't line up with your work schedule, or your partner's work schedule. Because my child is excelling academically, and I absolutely don't think that she…

To add to that: Because leaving for vacation one day before school ends and returning one day after school resumes is often not even half as expensive as lining them up.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#356

Post by from-nibly »

bombcar wrote: post #339
fn-mote wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree with this defeatist attitude, and I do not think it is supported by evidence. Regularly washing your hands reduces spread of the flu by 30%. (Old study, not going to find it.) I will believe anti-disease spread measures are effective until they are proven otherwise. > You're usually "infectious" before you're symptomatic This trait of Covid was what made it unusual . For the flu, the most infect…

Sure, and you should take reasonable precautions (including not penalizing "sick days" in various ways), but if kids go to school they're going to get sick.

I agree with this but if you knowingly send your sick kid to school everyone should be united in being pissed off at you.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#357

Post by vlunkr »

mattw2121 wrote: post #135
vlunkr wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, lots of travel is based around life events. I can’t control the fact that funerals and weddings can happen at any time of year.

You can control if you are going...

Lol. Yes I suppose.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#358

Post by schwartzworld »

jawns wrote: post #18

Is it possible that expectations around attendance have never been reasonable or even safe? In an ideal world, people shouldn't go to work or school when they are sick. Not only does it slow their recovery, but in the case of communicable diseases, it spreads the illness. Yet a lot of schools have released post-pandemic guidance about how students should still come to school with minor illnesses. And most workplaces…

Honestly I don't know what the answer is. Having a kid stay home sick is a tremendous burden for working parents. Maybe it's not so bad if one parent is a homemaker, or if you have a network of family members to support you. Many families do not. It's quite difficult for us to manage on top of the many times school closes when work does not.

We are both lucky enough to even have jobs that let you take a last minute personal day to care for your child, but many jobs do not work this way, or even if you can take off, you lose income. You're not going to keep a kid with a stuffy nose home if it means not having enough to make ends meet.

Tough shit, right? But kids get minor colds a lot. In the winter they just infect each other (and us) all the time. Often, by the time they show symptoms the whole class has already been infected.

The practical realities have to be acknowledged. The solution is to draw a line, on one side you are sick enough to be required to stay home, and on the other, oh well.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#359

Post by archagon »

seneca wrote: post #279
ryandrake wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the real issue here is that a subset of people simply have fewer fucks to give about school, and that has been accelerated by the distance and space that COVID created between students/parents and school. Some parents are even giving negative-fucks about school, in other words being actively against public education, teachers, and so on. I know of Facebook groups where parents share tips on how to maximize…

> And, a surprising number of my wife's friends from church have opted for homeschooling, so they can teach their kids from the Bible and skip all that science and math "liberal indoctrination". I can assure you, the people newly complaining about "liberal indoctrination" in schools don't mean science and math. It's fine to disagree with people about what should be taught, but it's not productive to ignore how much e…

I'm pretty sure most of them have no real idea what they're complaining about, other than what the angry man on TV told them. See the giant, nonsensical hubbub over "critical race theory" a few years ago, as well as stuff like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/us/desantis-florida-ap-af...

There are probably legitimate criticisms of recent changes to public education, but it's never the things that Republican politicians harp on.

Also, for what it's worth, much of what my generation was taught in school was utter bullshit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me. If anything, the idea that my children would be taught that the Pilgrims and Indians were best friends, that Columbus was someone to look up to, or that the Civil War was really about states' rights is what would compel me to homeschool, not "liberal indoctrination." But many, like DeSantis, still appear to believe that these lies should be taught.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#360

Post by freitzkriesler2 »

nothercastle wrote: post #143
freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much this. People keep kids home now for almost any reason at all and you'll get a chorus of replies telling you that your opinion is wrong. People need to toughen up. Not every cold is covid.

Why do you care? Most public schools are so slow now you could miss a month and they would still have not covered more than a week of material

If you really think that, then you don't have a kid or worse: you have an abysmal school district.

Part and parcel why I purposefully bought a house where the district was highly rated. Missing several weeks is a serious blow.

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